1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wide viewing angle driving circuit and method for a liquid crystal display, and more particularly, to a driving circuit and method which improves the viewing angle of a liquid crystal display (LCD) panel such that a screen can be viewed normally even at a variety of angles.
2. Description of the Related Art
Thin film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) provide many advantages over cathode ray tubes (CRTs), but they also possess some weaknesses which have slowed the development of their technology. One problem is that the brightness of a screen is appears differently according to the angle at which the screen is viewed. For example, black and white contrast inversion sometimes occurs in which black and white color images are inverted when a screen is viewed over a certain range of angles.
Therefore, for liquid crystal displays to gain more favor for use in televisions and other applications, their viewing angle must be improved so that the screen can be viewed normally without degrading the brightness from a wider variety of angles.
Various attempts have been made to improve the viewing angle of liquid crystal displays. For example, methods have been devised for improving the viewing angle by arranging the angle in which the liquid crystal material of a LCD pixel is oriented by a process called "rubbing." In one common method, different rubbings are performed for each pixel. Another common method applies different directions of rubbing after dividing pixels into units. FIG. 1A shows the method of applying different rubbings (i.e., the rubbing angles of 1 and 2 are different from each other) for each pixel and FIG. 1B shows the method for applying different rubbing directions after dividing a pixel into two or more units (3 and 4).
FIG. 1C shows another conventional method which aims to improve a wide viewing angle by differentiating the storage capacitor volume of each pixel and by changing the voltage maintenance characteristic of pixels (i.e., the storage capacitor volumes of pixel A and pixel B are different from each other).
These conventional methods have disadvantages in that the manufacturing process becomes quite complex because rubbings must be performed twice or more, and the screen quality of the liquid crystal display is degraded by after-images and flicker and the like.
Therefore, there remains a need in the art for a liquid crystal display which effectively and simply provides an increased viewing angle. The present invention satisfies this need.